Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005

In the 400 years after Columbus¿s voyage to the New World, some 15 million Africans were carried to the Americas in chains. But beginning in the 18th century, some African Americans found their way back to their ancestral continent. Here, Campbell examines more than 2 centuries of African American journeys to Africa, from the arrival of the first colonists in Sierra Leone & Liberia to the heritage tourism of our own time. Subjects include many of the central figures in American intellectual, political, & artistic life -- Martin Delany, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, & Maya Angelou. The journeys recounted here illuminate African Americans¿ ever evolving relationship with Africa &, their complex relationship to the U.S.